Evaluating the Influencing Factors of Educational Underachievement in Gifted and Talented Students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences

Regarding the importance of developing the gifted and talented students, the implementation of educational programs for them should be considered. The educational underachievement in these students is regarded as a social problem, which happens due to ignorance of their skills and creativity. Continual monitoring and controlling the Educational Underachievement indices is of great importance in medical education, and ignoring this condition will be due to insufficiency in the health servicing efficacy of the community. This cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out on all of Gifted and Talented Students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences that had Educational Underachievement during 2007-2010. Data collected by using a self-structured questionnaire which reliability had been measured by specialists and its validity was approved by internal consistency method. Collected data were analyzed by SPSS package (version 18) through descriptive and analytical statistics (t-test and chi-square).Of the respondents 60.7% were female, the average age was 19.64, 58.4% non-native, 95.5% single, and 92% with no entrance extra-priorities. 74% had gotten mark "A" (more than 17), and 62.7% were accepted straightly into the university. In the part of individual factors, absence of an efficient program had the highest (4.50), and lack of interest to the academic field had the lowest (2.62) points. In the part of familial factors, absence of an efficient connection between home-university had the highest (4.24), and family afflictions and problems had the lowest (1.42) points. In the part of educational factors, the most affecting factor in educational underachievement has been recognized as the absence of exciting the motivation (4.74), and lack of a friendly ambient in the classrooms got the lowest (2.62) points. The total points in the all three parts are 4.3, 3.8 and 2.6, respectively. According to the results of this study, it seems that the supportive vision of the academic authorities in all fields to improve the motivation of the gifted and talented students is necessary. For this purpose, the course units and the educational curriculum should be revised and rearranged to distribute the appropriate courses reasonably throughout the course plan. On the other hand, contribution of the skilled advisory teachers, should be considered to do striding paces in the flourish of the creativity of these students.